The present invention relates to an information processing system and an information collecting method of collecting pieces of information related to contents on a network, and also to a computer program.
With developments of computers and communication technologies, users become able to access a variety of resources in a network such as the Internet etc. The contents in a variety of categories such as animated images (motion pictures), sounds (including music data and vocal sounds), still images (still pictures), character data and soon, are provided on the network.
Further, a majority of terminal devices come to connect to the network at all times owing to a reduction in communication charges. Under such an environment, there arises a desire for utilizing the contents on the network as by the conventional TV and radio. This is because the animated images and sounds on the network contain the same categories of contents as those provided by TV programs and radio programs.
The TV and radio, however, upon switch-on and predetermined settings, provide the contents in accordance with a program schedule without any active operation of a user. While on the other hand, the user, when accessing the contents on the network, needs the active operation.
Namely, the user, before utilizing the contents on the network, must trace the information on the network by an interactive operation. Therefore, even though the computers and networks have widely spread, the user is unable to simply passively utilize the contents on the network as by the TV and radio.